Dear Sarah,
I rejoined this list yesterday because I had this insight of the
impressive work of Can Sonmez into poetry and cancer that I thought
Brian can benefit from. As I was concluding the email, I could not
resist but asking for a critique of my thesis on a critique of LET.
I should like to stress very strongly that my thesis dealt with ideas
rather than people and was a critique of what I thought, until Jack's
reply yesterday, was the LET approach (Jack Whitehead's website and
publications).
I do not deal with persons. I deal with ideas.
I was left unsupervised when Jack retired in 2009 and we could not
draft the thesis I originally wanted on a therapeutic AR tool until
then.
In fact, Jack did not see the thesis until after my Viva Voce when I
made it a point to come to him in person, the evening of my Viva, and
for him to be the first to get me a congratulatory drink at the
University's bar.
I think it is all in my thesis that could be accessed from Jack's
website at http://actionresearch.net/living/serper.shtml.
I also summarised the major critiques here, in this forum today.
I think we live in a time where practitioners require a support and a
self-care tool. We are objectified, dehumanised, degraded, made
saturated and turned into tools and objects. Then, we are tossed like
used goods.
I think the living contradictions and dialectics should be turned into
a self-care cathartic tool in which the practitioner, with the help of
fellow practitioners, create a dialectical AR account in the course of
which he/she identifies, delves into and processes situations in
his/her practice that make him/her feel and experience angst,
frustration, anger, exclusion, isolation, alienation, poor
relationships with self and others, and ontological void and
insecurity. Then, he/she can work out, with the help of colleagues,
action plans to dialectically and poietically transmute these poor
experiences and situations into a more meaningful, fulfilling and
securing existence in, with and towards the world for himself/herself.
To do this, I turned Jack and Jean's original question into my, how do
I lead a more meaningful existence in the world for myself and
developed a method that turns auto-dialogical logging for oneself into
dialogical blogging with others. I offered this blogging method as
better than Jack's youtube method that I criticised. I also
criticised the turn into 'inclusionality' that I argued to new-agist
and cultist and lacking scholarship. I described my dialectical AR
aternative to LET
Hence, my conclusion is that LET should abandon its epistemology focus
and the 'inclusionality' idea and youtube and move into a more
ontological, cathartic and auto-poietic form of dialectical, living,
concrete and embodied, AR.
The main task in hand now for us all is to support the exhausted,
saturated and degraded practitioner as he/she is putting his/her
knowledge and LET accounts (explanation of practice and educational
transformation) into the public domain.
When I first said this to Jack in 2004, he said that this is the task
of psychology not education. I did not like this division of labour
as I think the practitioner's well-being and health is the interest of
all and is interdisciplinary. I still hold this view.
Alon
Quoting Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>:
> First of all, I would like to congratulate Alon for offering Jack,
> his PhD supervisor, such a worthy and a valuable retirement gift.
> Despite Jack's long standing invitation to engage with him about his
> ideas and his influence in educational contexts, there have been
> several who have attempted to do so - in fact in front of me here as
> I write this email I have the video (such a generous present) from
> David Tripp, who came all way from Australia to talk with him.
> Ironically, David levelled a very similar criticism of Jack's work
> at that time, namely that Jack was actually not drawing out evolving
> educational theories in the doctorates that he supervised. Instead,
> he was enabling reified accounts of practice about Lived
> Educational Theories - caught in the act of writing like, one might
> say, a butterfly pinned to a display board for anatomical
> dissection. I, too, last year tried to respond to the BERA Research
> Intelligence article where Jack invited discussion in an e-seminar.
> As Brian knows (thank you Brian for alerting me to this
> conversation today) sadly, Jack declined to engage in any dialogue
> whatsoever. Such strange behaviour, it seemed to me...
>
> My focus, and I would be grateful to understand more from Jack
> himself (apologies, Marie, I know you like to answer) about his
> interpretation of Habermas and its application in relation to
> validating living educational theory doctoral accounts , resides here:
>
> Validation appears to depend, for living educational theory doctoral
> submissions, on ascertaining whether an individual student has
> offered a credible account of events i.e. it seems believable by
> someone in the same location at the same time as an event described.
> This validator need not necessarily have even been present during a
> critical incident, for example, and might not be the person working
> most closely alongside the student as events, which he/she has
> recounted, progressed. The account has to be a 'believable' one.
> Now, taken to its logical conclusion we might have this scenario?
> This student decides to 'get a PhD' and elects to study with Jack.
> Feeling very annoyed at the apparent slow progress of his studies,
> he contacts another university but when he finds this will not be a
> speedier route at all, returns to study with Jack, he weaves his
> account of events around those sources of information Jack has
> listed for doctoral candidates to read. He adapts his language to
> align with others' living theories
> and he tells a good yarn. That it isn't validated by anyone other
> than his wife (also a student studying with Jack) is no concern.
>
> The examiner of the said thesis is unaware that there were others in
> the same location at the same time as events recounted and that
> they have been (not anonymised - that doesn't convey the nature of
> the depersonalisation that has occurred) rather excluded so that
> their voice cannot be heard. The validation cycle is closed. They
> are outside the validation process. I wonder if that could happen?
> If telling a believable account is at the root of the validation
> process for living educational theories, it could?
>
> Of course, the problem then is that when the innocent (or naive?)
> cite the merits of the account in a justification of the living
> educational theory approach, they would be extending the lie, the
> cheating, would they not? Any listener would be unaware?
>
> So - Alon, I would be grateful for your assistance (I admire your
> work, as you know). Could you give us insights into the major points
> where you have engaged in critique of Jack's approach to action
> research, please? What major conclusions were drawn?
>
> Many thanks for reading my lengthy email!
>
> Just an indication of my passion to learn!
>
> Sarah
>
> Sarah Fletcher
>
> Editor-in-chief for IJMCE (The International Journal for Mentoring
> and Coaching in Education - EMERALD Press) and Convenor for the BERA
> Mentoring and Coaching Special Interest Group (2005 to date). My
> website at http://www.TeacherResearch.net
>
>
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